Links

Feeling Insecure: Valentin Vaselescu: VoltaireNet
Acting Out: Daniel Larison: The American Conservative
Reaction: Andrei Akulov: Southfront
Bad Faith: The Saker: Unz Review
Censorship: Nimer Sultany: The Disorder of Things
Fraud: Cain Berdeau: Courthouse News
A Tangled Mess: Ben Hunt: Epsilon Theory

Dynamic Facism Links

American Fascism: Henry Giroux: TruthDig
Putting The Smily Face Back On It: Alex Isenstadt: Politico
It's Banks: Michael Hudson
But It's Bad When "They" Do It: Editors: Cyprus Mail
Regardless Of What We Do: Daniel Larison: The American Conservative
Missing Persons, West: b: Moon Of Alabama
Missing Persons, East: Laura Chen & Mimi Lau: SCMP
Missing Economy: Jonathon Cook: Unz Review
Missing Reality: Richard North: EUReferendum
In So Many Ways: Alexander Kafka: Chronicle Of Higher Education
But For A Purpose: b: Moon Of Alabama
With Blow Back Of Its Own: Pravin Sawhney: The Wire
Integrating Incompetence: b: Moon Of Alabama
Waging War: Maya Mynster Christensen: OUP
To Extract Peace: Billie Muraben & Catherine Hyland: Bloomberg
For The Moral Frauds: David Whyte & Jorg Wiegratz: Routeledge

Of A Dying Order: Jonathon Cook: CounterPunch
That Will Kill Us All If We Let Them: Umair Haque: Medium

Links

Labor Pains: Andrew Murray: New Statesman
Racist Lies: Kennith Surin: CounterPunch
Dangers & Opportunities: Jonathon Cook: CounterPunch
Elite Betrayals: Paul Craig Roberts: Unz Review
Scientific Capitalism: Nafeez Ahmed: Independent
Digital Drain: Janine Morley et al: ScienceDirect
No Deal Banking: Michael Ellington & Costas Milas: LSE
Short Cuts: Philippa Hetherington: LRB
Slightly Longer Moments: Martin Sieff: Strategic Culture
Representative Surveillance: Patrick Martin: WSWS
And Its's Banking: Michael Hudson et al.
How To Spend It: Matt Taibbi: Rolling Stone
Missed Opportunity: Christopher Gisiger: FUW
Amazon Welfare Queen: Matt Taibbi: Rolling Stone
Troublesome Intelligence: Chanda Chisala: Unz Review

Plus Ca Change Links

Plus Ca Change: Matt Taibbi: Rolling Stone
Learning & Forgetting Nothing: Jamie McGeever: Reuters
Bailed Out The Elite: Matt Stoller: Vice
The Unlearned, Forgotten: Michelle Conlin, Robin Respaut: Reuters
The MIC Take Away: Nafeez Ahmed: Medium
And "Advances": Patrick Tucker: Defense One
Domestic Use?: David French: National Review
Military Disgrace: Maya Christensen: OUP
Populist Threat?: Jamelle Bouie: Slate
Set Theory Of The Left: : CounterPunch: Haydar Kahn
What's At Stake: Jeremy Grantham: GMO
Prognosis: James Hansen et al: ACPD

Links

Flagging Falseness: Staff: South Front
Felling Forrests: Erik Stokstad: Science
& Degrading Permafrost: Maria Winterfeld et al: Nature
GFC 2020: Nouriel Roubini & Brunello Rosa: Project Syndicate
Bubbles!: Edward Chancellor: Reuters
Zombies!: Edward Chancellor: Reuters
Have Mores!: Edward Chancellor: Reuters
Dedolarization!: Arkady Savitsky: South Front
Social Insecurity: Debbie Dougherty et al: Phys. Org
Dregs Of Britain: Richard North: Eureferendum
& Their Lies: Alexander Mercouris: Consortium News
"The Resistance" Death Cult: Andrew Paul: McSweeny's 

Links

False Flags: George Washigton's Blog
In Action: Staff: South Front
Impending Syria Incident: VIPS: Consortium News
Deadly Democracy: Arundhati Roy: NYRB
Trumping Media: Christian Whiton: National Interest
Missing Money Left:Jackson Lears: NYRB
Missing Money Right: Bradley Birzer: The American Conservative
Money, Left & Right: Michael Kalecki: Delong
Ideology Of Collapse: Ghassan Kadi: The Saker
Goldfinger: Oliver Bullough: The Guardian
Rent That Can't Be Paid, Won't: Corey Kilgannon: NYT
Euthanasia Of The Rentier: John Laurits
Anatomy Of AI: Kate Crawfrod & Vladan Joler

Harvesting Life for Tin. Bangka Indonesia

Links

In The Long Run, We're All Dead: Adam Tooze: LRB
Everything Utility, Privatized: Ming Zeng: Harvard Business Review
The Classical Canon, Privatized: Cory Doctorow: Boing Boing
Distribution Expropriated: Polemic Digital
Corporate Censorship: Richard North: EUReferendum
The Next Crisis: Hugh Son: CNBC
Unaffordable Slaves: Emily Baker: Sydney Morning Herrald
The Russian Cat: Andrea Martyanov: The Unz Review
War, Commerce Or Commercial War: Pepe Escobar: Asia Times
Winning, By Some Definition: Nick Turse: Naked Capitalism

Links

Fessing Up At Public Expense: Will Weissert: The Oregonian
Messing Up At Public Expense: Bethany McClean: New York Times
Welfare Queens: Meagan Day: Jacobin
And Their Oily Politics: Pam Martens: CounterPunch
Goyim Golgotha : Philip Giraldi: The Unz Review
Putin Power In Place: Tony Wood: Jacobin
Trying To Hold On To It: Lee Smith: Tablet
The System Mourns Itself: John Gilmore: AlphaNews
Talking Turkey: Adam Tooze

Links

Uber Resistance: Chris Brooks: Labor Notes
eMagna Carta: Dennis Snower: Naked Capitalism
Chinese Dynamism: Bill Bishop: Sinocism
NeoFailurism: George Eaton: New Statesman
Eclipsing Poverty (Not Reducing It): Jason Hickel: LSE
And The Delusions It Supports: Ian Welsh
What Happened In The Dark: Daniel Alarcon: Wired
Death At Sea: James Bradley: The Monthly
The President Is Terrible;): Black Unicorn

Links

The KeK Wars: John Michael Greer: Ecosophia
SelfDeLiberalization: Umair Haque: Medium
The Diet It Makes: Umair Haque: Medium
Why Elect Progressives: Julia Conley: Common Dreams
Virtues Of Protection: Robert Skidelsky: Project Syndicate
Zero Sum Economy: Adair Turner: Project Syndicate
Taxing Ground: Staff: Economist
Re-Framing: Nick Hanauer: Politico
Linking Politico and The Economist...strange times indeed!

End Times Links

It's Your Fault: Nathaniel Rich: New York Times
No, It's Capitalism's Fault: Naomi Klein: Intercept
NYT Goes Full Pogo: Hunter Cutting: Medium
Where'd You Get That Gun?: Robert Fisk: Unbalanced Evolution
Pointing It At Iran: Scott Ritter: TruthDig
Or Venezuela: Staff: RT
Old Fashioned German: Ulrich Rippert: WSWS
The Chinese Century: Gaius Publius: Naked Capitalism
Begins?: William Pesek: Asia Times
Heavy Stuff: Aaron Bady: Popula
Listening To Bullshit: Arvid Erlandsson, Artur Nilsson, Gustav Tinghog, Daniel Vstfjall: Plos/One

Times Are Changing

There was a change to the constitutional order in 2000 when the Supreme Court made a sui generis decision in Bush vs Gore to install the Court's majority candidate, imposing the court between voters and their elected President. That change proved the necessary pre-condition for permanent war, "The War on Terror," which the new administration set about seeking a cause for by ignoring the outgoing administration's admonitions about major, impending Al Qaeda action. Which once delivered, delivered the new administration the AUMF it sought, an open ended authorization to use force at the President's discretion anywhere "terror" could rationalize.

In 2008 when that war had lost all legitimacy and the plutocracy that supported it was flat on it's back, the American people elected Barack Obama with, however fleeting, a filibuster proof majority in the Senate to restore the previous constitutional order. Instead, "looking forward, not back" he gave a free pass to the US tele-coms we had learned through Edward Snowden were illegally surveilling everyone. In so doing, he made the surveillance state legal. From the military and intelligence "communities" who lied us into war, failed at the wars they lied us into, tortured, surveilled and extrajudicially murdered, Obama held no one to account except the whistle blowers who made public the depravity of war as a video game and other evidence of incompetence and bad faith in the US government and its military. By failing to use the power he was given, he legitimized all the abuses he was elected to mend, again changing the constitutional order, this time placing abuses of power by the MIC & IC above the law.

Likewise, instead of arresting and indicting the financial executives who precipitated the Global Financial Crisis, Obama bailed them out, "foaming the runway" with individual debtors to keep the financial frauds from crashing. Charged with the power to fundamentally reform the system, Obama chose to institutionalize all its most dramatically failing policies using the full resources of the Federal Reserve and Treasure, the power of fiat money itself, to stuff collapsed balance sheets back into solvency. By not enforcing the law when investment bankers, private equity and hedge fund managers bet against their own clients, Obama legitimized all manner of financial scams. Having loaned over $29 trillion to save these institutions, the citizens of the United States were their rightful owners, but rather than cleaning up the rot, instead the President chose to use the equity and savings of citizens to pay off the loans and save the criminal cast of bankers. Lets be clear, "de-regulation" always meant "legalization of criminal activity" in finance. Again, a change to the constitutional order making senior executives in finance above the law. The constitution now no longer applies to the elite, only to little people. After this disgusting performance, is it any wonder that given the chance Americans again voted for "change"?

Now we are confronted again with an incipient shift in the constitutional order, former CIA director and torturer John Brennan called the President a "traitor." The sitting director of the CIA, Dan Coats took it upon himself to publicly grade the President's performance in Helsinki while the President's sitting Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, directly contradicted his boss's policy on Ukraine. FBI director, Christopher Wray is backing Robert Mueller in his investigation into his boss despite that aging investigation having as yet to net anything of significance. Trump is certainly corrupt, but if the FBI can't find evidence in over a year to tie that to Russia, while it may not exonerate Trump, it does raise questions about what the FBI is really up to.

I would personally love to see Trump out of office, but the "Trump/Russia" hysteria is already being weaponized to attack any progressive candidates legitimately to the left of Clinton, who herself is well to the right of Richard Nixon and lacking even his integrity. Like that moment when Obama didn't arrest the torturers and didn't arrest the bankers, we are at the moment when, if Trump doesn't at least fire his insubordinate hirelings, they will destroy him, and ironically with him the last connection to electoral democracy in the US Federal system of government, imposing the IC between voters and their elected representatives.

At this moment, like real freedom of speech and conscience, however repugnant, and Trump is certainly that, he must be defended for the form of the role he occupies. If he is to be removed from office, the evidence must be clear, available to everyone and produced through a legitimate process, none of which is currently in evidence. If the "intelligence community", which couldn't tell the wall was about to fall in Berlin, failed to act on the 9/11 plot, got Weapons of Mass Destruction completely wrong in Iraq and has precipitated both the European and Central American refugee crises with its interventions in Syria and Central America is to get veto rights on who can be President, as a nation we are committed to the suicidally self indulgent global policies of an insular elite that feels no obligation to tell anyone outside of itself anything about the real operations of American power and has thus far experienced no pain itself for an unbroken 40 year record of failure on all the most important issues.

Plate Shifting Links

Cold Peace?: Maximilian Forte: Zero Anthropology
Seconded: Multiple Signatories: Nation
Extraterritorial Indictments: Jack Goldsmith: Lawfare
China Lens?: Christopher Balding: Balding's World
Women In Action: Alissa Quart & Barbara Ehrenreich
Economics Of Migration: Stephanie Leutert: Lawfare
Economics Of Power: Eric Dernbach: Medium
Politics Of Guns: Stephen Eisenman: Counterpunch

Links

Putin's Worry: Fox News: en.kremlin.ru
Looks Reasonable: Patrick Malone & Jeff Smith: CPI
Labor System Fail: Lambert Strether: Naked Capitalism
Political System Fail: Globinfo Freexchange: Unbalanced Evolution
Economic System Fail: Daniel Fernandez: UFM
Eco-System Fail: Paul Sweezy: Monthly Review
What To Do: Kris De Decker: Low-Tech

Links

IT's Not So Determined: Eric Gade: LARB
Pots & Kettles: Caitlin Johnstone
Liquidating Education: Janine Jackson: FAIR
Liquidating The Environment: Lori Lou Freshwater: Medium
Liquidating Capital: Yves Smith & Michael Olenick: NC
Liquidating Health: John Carroll: End Points
Liquidating The US: Chris Hedges: Russia Insider